2a : Episode Four : The Birds
by Taidine
Summary: There's no cure for the common cold... but Jeremie will have to find one or risk bringing a deadly strain of influenza back in time when the Lyoko gang returns to the past after XANA's latest attack.  Part of an alternate lateseasontwo story arc.
1. Chapter 1 : High Angle Shots

**Episode Four : The Birds**

Soundtrack: All American Reject's "Move Along."

_This is my favorite episode of the season. Not quite sure why, I just like how it worked out. Also, I thought I was very clever with the chapter titles. Anyone who can figure them out gets cookies, and, heck, I'll throw in a free piece of art. Whatever you request. Sure, why not?_

_A quick note; I got the impression, from the show, that William was supposed to be pretty cute and reflected this in my descriptions of him. It's not Kloe crushing on him or anything… Yeah. Okay, done now._

_Taidine_

Chapter One: High Angle Shots

A gaggle of geese flapped through the air, honking and cawing. Their silhouettes, shapely brown and black, formed a ragged V against the crisp blue of the early morning sky. A single cloud hung somewhere below them. It was a perfect autumn day – everything looked absolutely real, lacking the veil of summer heat, blurriness of spring humidity, or shroud of winter snow. Through this the flock tirelessly flew.

Now, below, a river became visible. It was lined by large, industrial buildings, warehouses and the like. In the center, an island dominated by an ancient, crumbling factory was connected to the mainland by a long suspension bridge, stretched like a thread over the water. It was incredibly blue water, impressive for a river that ran through the industrial zone of a sizeable city, only a shade darker then the sky it reflected. Also mirrored on its wave-chopped surface were the dark, blobby shadows of the geese, growing larger as the flock dropped towards it. They landed awkwardly, as geese are wont, but when the wings and wavelets calmed, a scene as picturesque as a postcard was revealed; a flock of elegantly long-necked waterfowl bobbing gently up and down in the blue water in front of the ancient grandeur of the Factory.

Something was wrong, though. Spreading outwards from the Factory was a dark blot, like an oil slick on the pristine water. It inched towards the unsuspecting fowl as they honked to each other and preened their smooth feathers; they paid it no mind as they slid directly beneath them. Eventually, it began to dissipate, breaking up and drifting downriver.

The sun inched up above the horizon. Suddenly, responding to some indiscernible avian signal, the flock began to paddle and flap up into the air, resuming their implacable migratory course as though nothing had happened.

But something had. They were fluttering noisily over the grounds of Kadic Junior High when the first goose faltered and plummeted from the sky.

- - - -

It was early – too early for a sane student to be up. But Odd Della-Robbia had never aspired to meet the standard definition of sanity. There was his hair – blonde, which a patch died purple, swept up into a single gravity-defying spike. There was his outfit, a belly-button shirt of purple worn over a long-sleeved shirt of subtly different purple. And there was his dog (according to some, this was a charitable name for it). Kiwi was thin-snouted, white-furred, barrel-bodied, and thoroughly disreputable. Although Odd loved him, and he could be incredibly friendly to other people Odd liked, most of the students weren't willing to make the effort, so Kiwi gained a reputation for hostility and nastiness or, at the very least, all-around weirdness.

Right now, Kiwi was at one end of a long, thin leash. The other end was held by Odd himself, who had a pair of headphones over his ears and a grin on his face. It was a beautiful day and all was right with the world… until Kiwi started growling.

"Ha?" Odd had been humming along to the music; now he broke off and lifted one earphone from his head, peering at his dog, which had begun pulling him to the right. "What is it, Kiwi?" Asked Odd rhetorically, following the insistent tugs.

Kiwi stopped at a pile of feathers and began snuffling at it, growling low in his throat. Odd switched his music off and leaned closer to figure out what it was. It was about the right color for a goose, but… "E-ew, Kiwi!" Odd wrinkled his nose and pulled the dog back from the limp animal. Kiwi stiffened, still growling, then suddenly went limp at the end of his leash. The growl segued into a whine, and the dog began rapidly backing away on his short, scrawny legs. Odd looked momentarily concerned, shrugged, and gave his pet a tug in the direction of the dorms.

- - - -

It was too early for a sane student to be up, but Jeremie Belpois had been roused by something more insistent then habit, or even an alarm clock: the electronic chirping of his laptop. As its beeps penetrated his covers, he poked his disheveled blonde head out from under the rumpled bed sheets, blinked a few times, then came fully awake with a start. Suddenly enervated, he kicked free of his comforter, flailed about for his glasses, found his glasses, jammed them onto his nose, and fell into the seat in front of his desk.

Displayed on the screen of his laptop was a faintly translucent image of an elongated white cylinder, wreathed in red mist. A series of unintelligible numbers were displayed in various parts of the screen, and they must have meant something to Jeremie, because he nodded to himself slightly as his gaze flicked back and forth behind his glasses. "Odd," he called out, "XANA's activated a Tower. Call Yumi and Aelita." He began to type.

After a moment of this, he seemed to notice the complete lack of response from his roommate. Tearing his gaze away from his computer, he looked instead at the one other bed in the room – empty. "Odd?" Jeremie rose from his chair with a growing panic. Odd's dog was gone too. "Kiwi?" That could only mean… _That Odd went out to walk his dog?_

Jeremie slapped his forehead. For the 'smart' one of the team, he sure could be an idiot sometimes. Walking back to his computer, he punched up four cell-phone shaped boxes, each surmounted by a portrait: Odd, with his unmistakable wry grin, a girl with vividly pink hair, a brown-haired boy looking dour, and an Asian girl with a kind of skeptical smile. There was a chorus of rings.

A light under the pink-haired girl blinked green. "Hello? Jeremie?" murmured the sleepy voice of Aelita.

"We have an active Tower," Jeremie said into the button mike attached to his laptop.

"I'll be right there," replied Aelita, and the window closed.

The next person to pick up was the black-clad cynic. "Jeremie, please tell me you're calling this early to annoy me."

"Sorry, Yumi," Jeremie apologized, "XANA's activated a Tower. Can you meet us at the Factory?"

There was a pause, then Yumi sigh. "Of course, Jeremie."

Behind Jeremie, there was a creak, as of a door opening. He spun his swivel chair; between his room and the hall beyond, leaning on the doorframe, was the grim brown-haired boy whose picture had just vanished from the screen. "I sleep right next door," Ulrich groused, "You could have knocked."

Jeremie just shrugged. "We're waiting for Odd." Odd's picture continued to ring, or rather, play techno music. Apparently the group's comic had decided to download an alternative to the shrill jangle that so annoyed Ulrich.

"He's probably wearing headphones," the brown-haired boy grumbled. Jeremie nodded vaguely. There was a noise from the hallway without; Ulrich peered around the doorframe. "Yup, he's wearing headphones."

"There's nothing wrong with my ears," replied Odd's high-pitched voice, "but my hands were full." He stepped into the room he shared with Jeremie, revealing he was indeed fully decked out in earphones and Walkman. Kiwi occupied his arms, huddled pathetically against his chest. The dog was in an even sorrier state then usual, whimpering, snuffling, and shivering. Odd put him gently on the bed, looking uncharacteristically worried. "I don't…" he was cut off by a fit of coughing that tore from his throat, doubling him over from its intensity. When he caught his breath and was able to speak again, he started over. "I don't know what's wrong with him."

- - - -

It was too early for a sane student to be up, which was exactly why Kloe Makhavi had roused herself at this indecent hour every day for the past week and headed out to the hatch in the woods, armed with only a pen behind her ear and a flash drive around her neck. This morning she was accompanied by Elizabeth Delmas, _ne _Sissi, because the principal's daughter slept in the dormitory next door and Kloe hadn't gotten dressed quietly enough.

"You've been going out here _every morning_?" Sissi shrilled, "Without _me_?" Kloe lifted the cover off the hatch and began climbing down into the darkness of the sewers. "You would never have found this place if it weren't for me!" Kloe reached the bottom. There were three skateboards and two scooters leans against the wall, as there had been every morning for the past week. She selected a scooter and began to unfold it. "Do you hear me?" shouted Sissi, climbing down after her. _I would have found it, _Kloe thought, _It just would have taken me longer. _She had, since her arrival at Kadic, acquired a deep dislike of the principal's daughter – probably because Sissi was an uncomfortable reminder of what she herself could have been like if her parents had been different. Despite the eye makeup, Sissi's personality was eerily similar to her own under the obscuring layers of pampering – and to add insult to injury, the priss was _useful _at times. So Kloe said nothing to interrupt Sissi's tirade.

The principal's daughter snapped the second scooter open, and they rattled off down the tunnel.

Ten minutes later, the pair stepped into the elevator. Sissi had succumbed into a steamy, nose-in-the-air silence. Kloe hit the second to last button and punched in a four-number access code; the elevator dropped beneath them. "So, you want to know what my friend thinks this is?" the reporter asked.

Sissi stared at the wall. "A secret plot to take over the world? That's just what a friend of yours would think. If you had any friends."

Kloe grit her teeth. Apparently the antipathy was mutual. "I've been at this school for slightly under a month. Excuse me if I don't have a gang yet. No, Elyse has been getting my code, and she thinks it's the mother of all video games."

"Hmph," snorted Sissi, "I think you've been watching too many movies. Or _Elyse _has no idea what she's doing. They wouldn't waste their time on a video game – at least, Ulrich wouldn't. I can't speak for Jeremie or Odd." Yumi, noted Kloe's inner reporter, didn't even get billing.

The elevator slid to a stop, hissed and clicked open. The doors slid apart ponderously, revealing the dimly lit interior of the computer room.

Silhouetted against the glow of the computer screen was a slouching, dark figure with tousled hair.

"William?!" Exclaimed Sissi incredulously.

He looked up – he was a student, black clothed and black-haired, evidently tall even sitting in the computer chair, with a certain air of casual sophistication. "Hey, Sissi. Who's your friend? I thought there might be someone else poking around the old Factory." He closed whatever he was working on with a click of the mouse and stood; Kloe noted that not only was he a good deal taller then Sissi, he even had a few inches over her, Kloe, which put her at a slight but distinct disadvantage she was not accustomed to. He was also far more handsome then any student had a right to be.

"Her?" Sissi shrugged, "Just Kloe. What are you doing here?" Kloe noted a stiffness to that apparently casual reply; Sissi was obviously equally susceptible to William's charms.

He shrugged. "Like I said, poking around." Brushing passed the girls, he pressed a button on the elevator; the doors opened, and he slid in. "I'll let you two get on with whatever you're doing, then." The doors slid shut, complicated circular mechanisms clicking and engaging, and William disappeared.

Kloe had seen him before – at a sporting event, if memory served. He didn't have the same effect from a distance. _Stop it, _she berated herself, _you like academics, not jocks. _Still… "He's unfairly hot."

Sissi pouted at the elevator doors. "Forget it," she advised, "_He's _smitten with that Yumi girl too."

Yumi… too? Kloe was beginning to see why Sissi loathed that girl. Pulling out the flash drive she wore around her neck, she plugged it into the computer and selected some code to copy, mulling it over.

- - - -

Aelita padded through the hallways of the dormitory in bare feet, pink boots held by their dangling pom-poms in one hand, a pair of white socks in the other. Her trademark hair looked even more tousled then usual, and she kept blinking. Sometimes she missed her virtual days – she hadn't needed sleep in Lyoko.

Jeremie's door hung slightly ajar. Inside, three boys were sitting on Odd's bed around a sad, shivering lump of white fur. "I don't know," Odd was saying, "one minute he was fine, then he started coughing. Now he's all… feverish." He stroked Kiwi with one hand and covered his mouth with the other as he began to cough himself.

"Odd, you don't sound too hot either," Ulrich pointed out.

"Allergies," the purple-clad boy squeaked.

Aelita walked into the room, took a seat at the far end of the bed, and began to pull on her footwear. "Is this XANA's attack?" She wondered aloud.

"Why would he infect Kiwi?" Said Ulrich, punctuating the sentence with a barrage of coughs.

Jeremie looked up, suddenly worried. "Unless… it's not just Kiwi. What if it's a contagious virus?"

"Nah," Odd shook his head, "Probably something he ate. Kiwi…" he dissolved into a fit of coughing and gasping for air. When he could breath again, he seemed to have lost that train of thought. "Is it just me, or is it cold in here?"

Ulrich and Aelita fixed him with worried stares. "That settles it," Jeremie said, rising to his feet. The world spun – he grabbed the edge of the bed to steady himself. "XANA's released some kind of modified bacteria, or virus. Aelita, get to the Factory now, but try not to get too near Yumi – you might be contagious. The rest of us are now in quarantine!" He made his way to the computer chair and collapsed awkwardly into it, starting to type. "I'll try to find out exactly what this is. Odd, you watch Kiwi – he has a faster metabolism, so we'll be able to prepare for the symptoms before they hit us. Ulrich, you make sure…"

Aelita, brows drawn with worry, slipped out into the hallway and closed the door behind her.


	2. Chapter 2 : Chiaroscuro

**Episode Four : The Birds**

Soundtrack: All American Reject's "Move Along."

Chapter Two: Chiaroscuro

Kloe was pulling her flash drive out of the supercomputer when she heard the mechanisms of the elevator disengaging. "Light…" she muttered. Sissi had produced a small pink notebook and a pen topped with a feather from somewhere unknown and was copying code into it, although what good that would do only Sissi could know. She almost dropped both pad and pen as Kloe grabbed her wrist and yanked her behind one of the large metal structures. "What?" Sissi squeaked, but the reporter shushed her and peered around their hiding place.

The elevator doors opened, and pink-haired Aelita stepped out. She looked tense, concerned as she walked across the color and took a seat at the computer. There was a black earpiece next to the keyboard; she tucked it into her ear, gingerly pulling a long, pink earring free. "Yumi, are you in the scanner room?"

The two eavesdroppers couldn't hear Yumi's reply, but Aelita shook her head. "No symptoms yet, but I could still be contagious. It's better if I virtualize you before I come down." She tapped at the keyboard. "I think the Tower is in the forest sector. I'll send you in as close as possible." Tap, tap. A picture of a girl in a kimono and face paint popped up. "Scanner, Yumi."

Somewhere buried in the back of Kloe's head, the words had an echo: Jeremie's voice, made tinny by intercom, uncertain. _"Scanner, Kloe." Bright light shining from underneath, a strong updraft disarraying her hair._

"Transfer, Yumi," said Aelita. _Black and red tunnel, no sensation. _Kloe blinked away the impossible memories, but she whispered the next word along with Aelita.

"Virtualization."

- - - -

Odd sat on his bed, wrapped in a blanket and shivering. Kiwi lay at his feet, prone and unmoving except for the rise and fall of his ribcage; before Odd had begun quaking too hard to get an accurate measurement, the dog's breathing had been shallow, his heartbeat erratic. Ulrich was lying down in Jeremie's bed, asleep or faking it very convincingly, and Jeremie was at his computer, which was currently running split-screen. The left half showed a news report, a pristine anchor narrating over a series of disturbing images. "It seems the world's next epidemic may be beginning in France today as more and more people check into hospitals with a fever and persistent cough… Doctors are treating the symptoms and attempting to isolate the cause… first case was reported less then two hours ago… seems to have originated from a flock of migratory birds…" The right half was hooked up to the Internet and showed the close-spaced text of a medical journal; Jeremie was skimming through this with an occasional break as he was wracked with a coughing fit.

Finally, he muted the news report and swiveled in his chair to face his friends. "What have we got, Einstein?" Quipped Odd weakly through chattering teeth. He had sweat beading on his forehead despite his shivers.

Jeremie coughed. "It's definitely a virus," he began hoarsely, "I think it might be a particularly virulent strain of influenza."

"My dog is dying from the _flu_?"

"Not exactly," Jeremie elaborated, pausing to cough, then picking up again. "XANA mutated the virus, and may still be affecting it – it's more rapid and deadly then should normally be possible. Influenza in general is only fatal to people with immune systems that are already weak, but this strain… well, judging by Kiwi we have less then an hour before we fall into a catatonic state. After that, our chances of survival are slim at best."

It was a measure of Odd's state that he didn't ask Jeremie to define 'catatonic.' He pulled the covers up to his chin and settled back against the wall. "No problem. Aelita can deactivate a Tower in five seconds flat. You do a return to the past and we're all back to normal."

Jeremie peered through his glasses at his friend miserably. "Not necessarily. Remember the ghosts in the return-to-the-past function?" He waited for Odd's nod. "Unless we find a cure for the virus at this end, we might just take it back with us!"

He closed the news window and pulled up a new program in its place. "Speaking of Lyoko…"

- - - -

The elevator doors released Aelita into the scanner room, where one of the gently glowing tubes stood invitingly open. The pink haired girl walked briskly but somehow reverently across the room, stepping in as though treading on sacred ground and turning to face the doors as they slid shut, closing her inside. The scanner filled with creamy light; she shut her eyes and tilted her head upward as a sudden strong updraft lifted her unnaturally colored hair into a halo of fluff. Then, a sensation of weightlessness, of _mass_lessness, as every atom was converted simultaneously to computer code…

An elf clad in green and pink landed lightly, easily on the forest floor.

Aelita very much liked Earth. It was a constant symphony of the unexpected, sights and sounds and smells that could never be duplicated in numbers. But Earth had just… _happened. _There was no sense of order, of purpose. It was too unexpected at times, and the delightful surprises could easily become a random, chaotic jumble. When she started feeling like that, there was nothing to do but edge closer to Jeremie and try to block it out. No one really _belonged_ on Earth – at least, not like she fit here, in Lyoko, as if the world had been built around her. And on Earth, despite all the senses gained, there was one she lost: the indescribable intuition of the underlying code.

As she rose effortlessly to her feet, the little elf felt something thud through the code, rhythmic and red – or at least, that was the closest she could come to describing it with the vocabulary of the normal five senses. It was power being drawn, or numbers rearranging, or Earth being interfered with, or something. Jeremie probably knew; all she knew for certain was it meant somewhere, nearby, a Tower was active.

Aelita spun around slowly, until she was facing the direction of the pulsations. A long path lined with trees stretched over the mists of the virtual void; she hadn't landed as close to the Tower as she would have liked. And where had…

Something buzzed through the code, a disturbance so minute she almost missed it under the steady thudding of the pulsations. The elf ducked just in time; a laser streaked over her head. She tracked it backwards with her eyes to its point of origin, a pair of buzzing green frolions hovering like enormous mechanical wasps off to her left, stingers trained on her.

A brightly colored disc of perforated metal sheered, screeching, through the air. Behind Aelita, someone shouted "Hiya!" as a second fan was loosed. Both struck home, and the monsters dissolved into their component parts. Yumi snatched her weapons out of the air, folding them shut with well-practiced flicks, and tucked them into her yellow sash. "Well, you took your time," she stated dryly, smiling.

Aelita shrugged and pointed down the path. "The Tower's that way."

"Take a right at the first T-bend," came a voice from the air, so familiar Aelita almost failed to notice the incongruity.

"Tha- Jeremie?"

"Yeah! My laptop is networked to the supercomputer. I can't do much, but at least we can talk."

Aelita smiled. An intersection of paths came into view before her; she and Yumi took the right fork. "We should make it to the Tower in no time, then," she enthused, "Then return to the past and…"

"Uh," Jeremie broke in, and from his hoarse voice she could already tell it was bad news. "About that return to the past?"


	3. Chapter 3 : Femme Fatales

**Episode Four : The Birds**

Soundtrack: All American Reject's "Move Along."

Chapter Three: Femme Fatales 

Aelita hadn't been gone for more then a minute before Sissi got tired of hiding and bounced to her feet, shrill voice ringing in the quiet, bare computer room. "Well? She's gone. We should go too, unless we want to be late. I don't know about you, but I have these little things called 'grades'?"

"That would plummet to their doom if Herve forgets to hand in the homework he did for you, I know," Kloe interrupted, also rising to her feet. Sissi crossed her arms over her pink shirt and hmphed indignantly, but Kloe walked right past her to the computer. "You can go if you want, but I'll happily cut ethics if it means finding out what Aelita and the others are up to." For the first time she could remember, there was something intelligible on the screen: a card of the sort you might find in a video game, showing the picture and stats of a virtual character. Only… the name across the top was familiar, and the character, despite her pointed ears and eclectic clothing, was – from pink hair to the earring dangling from one lobe – unmistakably Aelita.

Curiosity piqued, Kloe began clicking around on the screen, pulling up several other cards in turn: A geisha with a pair of wicked looking fans who was clearly Yumi under the face paint, Ulrich wearing simplified samurai armor and holding a katana, Odd in his trademark purple, a feral grin, cat paws, and a tail, and a girl clad in a flamboyant red trench coat with a bandolier of darts across her chest…

"Light," Kloe breathed.

"Hey – that's _you!_" Sissi accused.

_She ran through a virtual landscape, pulling a dart free… Aelita held by a tentacled apparition… "...fighting an evil supercomputer…" …flying lasers… "that's trying to take over…" "Return to the past NOW!"_

"I knew you were in on this!" the principal's daughter continued. "Now, tell me what's going on or… or… I'll bring my father down here!"

"Shh." Kloe commanded, "I'm only slightly less clueless then you, which is a grave insult as far as I'm concerned. Look, remember last Sunday? When I interviewed you, and we found the Factory?"

"How could I forget?" replied Sissi sarcastically, "You still haven't printed that interview, by the way."

"It's in today's paper, if we ever get it out," said Kloe absently. She pulled out the pen tucked behind her ear and turned it over in her hands, poring over the innocuous writing utensil. "Anyway, I could just be crazy, but I think it happened at least twice."

There was the smallest of flickers in Sissi's expression before she resumed her formidable mascara'd glare. "That's ridiculous," she replied. But Kloe hadn't missed that hesitation. What did the principal's daughter know that she wasn't telling?

"There's only one way to find out." Kloe tapped a finger on that one inexplicable character card. "You'll have to virtualize me."

Sissi drew herself up to argue. Kloe sat in the chair and tried to let it wash over her. "Why you? What does that have to do with anything? What is virtualization, anyway? Only you could possibly come up with such a…"

Eventually, she wound down. "Sit in the chair, put on the earpiece, and run the program," Kloe advised when silence resumed at last, "or go back to school. I'm sure you have people to antagonize. I'm going down to the scanner room."

- - - -

Jeremie tapped away at his keyboard, fingers trembling slightly, occasionally stopping to cough. He looked like something the dog dragged in, which probably would have become a pun if Odd hadn't been just as bad. Jeremie's hair was plastered damply against his head, his glasses askew; he was sweating and shivering, often both at the same time.

"Now straight ahead – if you move left, you'll find a log bridge," he said hoarsely into the mike atop his laptop. He was staring at a map, made of faintly luminous blue lines on which a pair of triangles, yellow and green respectively, edged their way left. A trio of red dots blinked suddenly into being at the upper corner of the screen: Jeremie scowled, glanced at some text snaking along the bottom of the map, and added, "More wasps, but only three. Looks like XANA's stretched itself a little too thin." _Not that it matters if this virus comes back into the past with us…_

In Lyoko, Yumi's fans shrieked through the air. Aelita ducked behind a tree to avoid a rain of lasers. One struck Yumi's kimono, leaving a brief crackle of sparks - and eliciting a "watch those life points!" from Jeremie - but the other two went wide, the fans cut deadly arcs through the air, and the monsters dissolved into mechanical miscellany.

Jeremie nodded to himself. "All right. Once you're across the bridge…" Another green mark blinked into being near the bottom of the screen. "Huh? Yumi, Aelita, you have company."

"Kloe?" Said a piercingly shrill voice, "I ran the program, did anything happen?"

"Yeah. Wow, yeah," said another voice, pitched in the alto range and ready to slip into sarcasm at the slightest provocation, "Umm. Wow. It's a computer game, only… not." A pause. "There are two other people… uh-oh…"

"Jeremie?" Asked Aelita, "Is that Kloe?"

"Who's _that_?" Sissi demanded.

Jeremie typed frantically; past the shivers and Kiwi licking his shoe it was hard to concentrate. "Uh – she must have virtualized herself at the Factory."

"_I _'virtualized' her, if that's what you call it," said Sissi peevishly, "And I demand an explanation now!"

Jeremie coughed. "It's complicated. Hold on a minute – Kiwi, would you stop… Kiwi?"

"What is it?" Breathed Aelita.

"I'll tell you later. Take Kloe with you, the Tower is dead ahead. Sissi, watch the screen for red dots, shout if you see one." Jeremie's sickness was forgotten in a rush of excitement.

"Where are you go-" Yumi's voice was cut off as Jeremie toggled off the microphone, closed his Lyoko map, and connected to the Internet.

- - - -

Kloe raced across the log bridge, never glancing at the vast, misty void below, and drew to a halt by Aelita and Yumi, panting slightly. In her long, red trench coat and heavy boots, she should have been sweltering, but there didn't seem to be any temperature, in the same way the bandolier across her chest should have been heavy from the weighted darts hung in it, but didn't seem to affect her at all – as Elyse had deduced from Kloe's pirated fragments, it was a video game, albeit a video game more vast and complicated then anything ever before created. "I've been here before," she stated, or asked, as she joined the other two girls. "But I couldn't remember."

"No, you weren't," Yumi corrected, "We went back in time. There's no way you can remember. As far as you're concerned, it didn't happen." She began walking, straight forward.

"That makes no sense," came Sissi's voice from nowhere in particular.

Aelita shrugged. "But Jeremie said the return-to-the-past program is bugged. Maybe it decided Kloe was one of us when she went into Lyoko. That was how it operated originally."

"Does that mean I'll remember this time?" Asked Kloe, with some enthusiasm at the prospect.

"And what about _me_?" Sissi added.

Aelita shrugged. "Jeremie might know."

Kloe nodded, accepting for now, if not content. "Speaking of Jeremie, wha- whoa!" The last was the result of nearly stepping onto empty air; the trio had reached a place where the ground split, creating a sheer drop into the mists of the virtual void.

Aelita peered across it. Somewhere on the far side, a bone-white cylinder wreathed in red was dimly visible. "Aah…" Sissi's voice hummed, "there's a black patch on the map in front of you…"

"It's a bottomless abyss," Kloe corrected dryly. "Is there any way around it?"

"Aelita," Yumi asked, "can you-"

"No," the elf cut her off, "This wasn't put here by XANA, it's part of the original code. I can't change that. We'll have to go around."

"Is there any way around it?" Kloe reiterated, faintly irritated at the way no one had listened to her the first time.

The sounds of Sissi puzzling through the intricacies of Jeremie's map floated through the air. "Alright," she shrilled at last, "turn left."

Aelita shook her pink head. "Oh, Jeremie…"

- - - -

Ulrich slipped, shivering, through a world of vague and uncomfortable half-sleep, sometimes dreaming, more often painfully awake, trying to preserve what strength XANA's virus hadn't sapped from him yet. If Jeremie faltered, he would take over – what exactly he could do he didn't know, but ignorance had never gotten in the way of Ulrich's iron-hard determination. If XANA won today but the group survived, they would keep going because the brown-haired soccer player was in front. Some people mistook his bouts of angst for weakness, Ulrich breaking under stress, but that was a mistake; while he _bent_ easily, he could bend almost indefinitely, until you hit something hard. Yumi had some of the same quality, which was probably why he… admired her.

"Ulrich?" called Jeremie, as though from a distance. The world slowly came into focus; a pair of glasses resolved, followed by the sweat-slicked, miserable face on which they were worn. The computer operator was standing over the bed, one hand on the frame for support. Ulrich levered himself up on his elbows; the world spun, but he thought he could make it to his feet, maybe even walk if called upon. "How do you feel?"

"Like something a krab dragged in." Ulrich managed, "Yumi? Aelita?"

"They're fine, but going back in time isn't going to solve this. Can you walk?" Jeremie asked. The bespectacled boy didn't look like he'd be doing anything of the sort, but Ulrich had been resting. By way of answer, he rose into a roughly standing position, only needing to grab his friend's shoulder once for support.

"What do you need?" he asked. Jeremie handed him a fresh printout, already crumpled from his unsteady grip.

"All this. Go to the science lab, or the nurse." Ulrich looked at the paper; it appeared to be a short list of equipment and chemicals. "I don't have time to explain," Jeremie added, "We have less then half an hour before we're out like Odd." Ulrich glanced over at the opposite bed, where only the blonde, spiky tips of their friend's hair were visible above the covers.

"All right," he responded, and headed unsteadily for the door.

The hallway was long and silent – too silent even for this early hour, except for the occasional, ringing fit of coughs from one of the dormitories. Ulrich walked up it as quickly as he could, footsteps echoing along the empty corridor. Everywhere in the school was the same, students transferred to the infirmary or sent back to their dormitories when they took sick. It had spread so quickly… but the news reported birds were the main vectors, and Odd had admitted Kiwi had found a goose on the grounds, so between the close quarters of the school and the amount of small animals to spread the plague, it was hardly a surprise.

The science lab was both deserted and, by some miracle, unlocked. Ulrich lifted the list with one hand and grabbed the corner of a desk with the other; the words danced and wavered on the page. _Microscope. Syringe – might have to go to the infirmary for that one…_

- - - -

Yumi, Aelita, and Kloe raced through Lyoko to the rhythm of hurriedly gulped breaths and pounding feet. The long path ahead of them cut right, and they turned, slowing slightly. "The pulsations are getting stronger," Aelita reported.

"Right," said Sissi's voice, "Umm… you'll have to turn right again soon. Umm… Eep!"

"What?" Yumi demanded impatiently.

"Red dots, three of them. No, four!" Sissi reported frantically, "What are they?"

Yumi spun to face up the path; Kloe turned downward, slipping a pair of darts free of their holsters. Three spiked creatures, distorted domelike shells mounted on scuttling legs, raced down the path towards her. Yumi glanced backwards. "Kankrelats. Aim for the symbol on their shells."

Sissi blinked at the screen as a pair of character cards appeared on the screen; Kloe in her British-army outfit and three thorny, scuttling creatures, joined by the letters 'vs.' She tried clicking on them, but it didn't seem to have any effect.

Kloe let the two darts fly, then leapt to the side as three lasers zinged through the air. Her adrenaline, or its virtual equivalent, was up, and she found herself grinning. Had Lyoko been designed as a video game? If it ever got onto the market, it would be the biggest fad since jeans. _This _was what people played video games _for _– and it was all _real_. She tossed another pair of darts and twisted away from the lasers, reveling in ludicrously augmented reflexes as she danced with virtual death. One laser grazed her, but it didn't hurt precisely, just struck crackling blue sparks that tingled unpleasantly. There were only two kankrelats remaining now; one of her darts must have struck home. She darted between the pair and froze, feeling their eyes on her. Wait… then… jump!

Two lasers fired. Both hit, although not their intended targets, and Kloe landed in a pile of dissolving mechanical components. "Thank you for holding your applause until the end," she told the other two, sketching an exaggerated bow, drunk on the thrill of battle.

Yumi's look clearly indicated that she was not amused. "I thought there were four," she said, flipping her fans shut, but keeping them in her hands.

"Mmm…" Sissi peered at the screen. "One of them must have left!"

Yumi let out her breath in a half-growl, but Aelita began walking. "We'll find it when we find it, but if one of XANA's monsters decides not to attack us, I'm not going to… what's the expression?"

"Look a gift horse in the mouth?" Kloe suggested.

"Maybe," Aelita shrugged, "Although I'm still not certain how beasts of burden come into it.

Kloe did, but she wasn't about to start a discussion of obscure etymology with a girl from a computer. Besides, in XANA's case the expression didn't hold exactly – they would be checking to be sure the proverbial teeth were _pulled_.

- - - -

Ulrich collapsed on the bed, spilling delicate equipment across the vacant mattress, coughing and shivering violently. "Here… you go… Jeremie." His eyes closed, and he slumped back against the wall.

Jeremie pushed himself out of his chair, hoping he still had enough time. Carefully selecting one of the chemicals Ulrich had secured, he loaded it into a syringe and injected it into his own arm; then, pausing briefly to check Ulrich's pulse, he got to work. "Kiwi!"

- - - -

Yumi released her fan with a high-pitched "Yah!" as another kankrelat materialized in front of her. The scuttling creatures were beginning to get on her nerves, but XANA didn't seem capable of more then minor annoyances today. "Jere- Sissi. How many life points have I got left?"

"Life points?" squeaked Sissi.

"Bar on the bottom of the card? Red dots?" Yumi hinted, beginning to run again.

"Umm… not a lot?" Sissi hazarded.

A laser zinged through the air from the stinger of a frolion. "Actually, you don't have _any,_" Sissi continued as Yumi dissolved into fractal squares. Kloe whirled, a dart whipping from her fingers to destroy the wasp as it tried to target her.

"Yumi's out," she reported, "Looks like it's just you and me, Aelita."

The elf nodded, looking less then enthused at the prospect. "We're nearly to the Tower," she said, gazing out at the bone-pale cylinder to the front and right. Then she began to run again; Kloe followed.

- - - -

Odd opened his eyes. Something was licking his face. "Kiwi?" He pushed the dog away and sat up, feeling as weak as if he had just been devirtualized. Jeremie was leaning over him with a concerned expression, looking pale and unsteady, but neither shivering nor coughing. "So, Princess did her thing?" Odd quipped, trying to give his friend a reassuring smile. Jeremie breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to the desk, where a microscope had been hooked into his computer, and various titration, distillation, etcetera-ation apparatus had been arrayed. Lifting his glasses, he peered closely at an unpleasant-looking liquid, then loaded it into a hypodermic needle.

"I don't know," Jeremie responded, holding the needle in his teeth and grabbing a damp cotton ball lying next to a bottle of peroxide. Ulrich was lying prone on the bed under Jeremie's poster of Albert Einstein; Jeremie swabbed a patch on the boy's inner arm and injected his unsavory-looking chemical concoction. "I'll check while Ulrich's coming around." Tossing the spent syringe in a wastebasket by his desk, the bespectacled computer operator sat down at his laptop and began to type.

- - - -

The lustrous doors of one scanner tube slid open, and Yumi fell forward as though shoved out. Back aching in memory of that last laser, she rose to her feet, darted for the elevator, and jammed down the button.

- - - -

Sissi sat at the computer, putzing around with buttons and feeling quite pleased with herself. Maybe she hadn't taken as active a role as Kloe, but she had _certainly _shown Ulrich and the rest of them what an asset she was. As if they hadn't known already! Well, now she would shove it in their faces. They wouldn't be able to shrug her off as easily as they had after that leaf monster fiasco, which they probably still thought she didn't remember. That just proved…

The elevator doors clicked. "Huh?" Went Sissi, turning to meet the full force of a frantic Yumi charging out like an Olympic runner off the starting block. "Is Aelita almost to the Tower?" the black-haired girl demanded, seizing the mouse.

Sissi stuck her nose in the air as Yumi clicked around the screen, refusing to budge from her seat. "Maybe. Why?"

"I need to find Jeremie's return-to-the-past program," said Yumi, which wasn't much of an answer. "And hope I'm not too late…"

- - - -

"We have arrived," Kloe announced theatrically, although her lack of breath spoiled the dramatic effect. The last few yards to the Tower they had been chased by a tarantule, which was still tailing them – even as Aelita touched her hands to the smooth white exterior, lasers flew and Kloe vanished in a shower of flickering squares. The virtual wall rippled and Aelita stepped through, feeling it part like liquid around her. The concentric circles of XANA's symbol lit with musical chimes as she walked passed them; a familiar weightlessness swept over her and she held herself stiff as some invisible force bore her gently up to the top platform of the Tower. A blue screen hung at chest height, tilted invitingly towards her. She rested one hand upon it.

IDENTIFICATION: AELITA

CODE: LYOKO

The world around her dissolved into black. "Tower deactivated," she whispered, and the last number winked out with a noise like the world on rewind.

- - - -

"Here it is!" Yumi exclaimed. Sissi tried to look past the black clothing of the other girl to see what she had found, but Yumi was already hitting the 'enter' button. "Return to the past _now_!"

White light exploded outward.

- - - -

Aelita padded down the hallway of the silent school and rapped gently on Jeremie's door, dreading what she might find. For a moment, she shivered – and it had nothing to do with the flu or the thin pink fabric of her nightgown.

Then the door cracked open to reveal Jeremie's familiar glasses. "Come in, Aelita."

She obeyed, the wooden floor chill under her bare feet. Odd was sitting on one bed, petting Kiwi and grinning like the maniac he was; Ulrich had taken Jeremie's usual chair, and his expression was one of more subdued relief. Aelita felt herself relax for the first time since Jeremie had reported an active Tower. "So – we went back in time?" She asked awkwardly.

Ulrich smiled. "Actually, it's thanks to Jeremie we're still here."

Jeremie shook his head and lead Aelita over to a free space on the edge of his bed. "Kiwi gets a lot of credit too," he said.

"Yeah…" Odd mused, "Want to explain that one to us again?"

"Alright." Jeremie never turned down a chance to demonstrate his genius. "The plague XANA created was targeted against humans specifically – so Aelita wouldn't get it, I think. But it also wasn't fatal to animals. Kiwi there recovered, and his immune system created antibodies to the virus. All I had to do was use his antibodies to give us a leg up, and our white blood cells could do the rest!"

Odd nodded. "Okay – you want to explain that to us again _again_?"

- - - -

The world… lurched. Kloe put one hand to her head as a sense of nauseating vertigo swept over her, rearranging everything and leaving her stranded in what felt distinctly like the wrong place.

But that was ridiculous. The Factory was exactly where she had to be if she ever wanted to find out what Jeremie and his gang were up to.

The elevator doors clicked shut on William, and Kloe dragged herself back to reality. "Did you feel that?" She asked Sissi.

The principal's daughter glared haughtily. "Feel what?" But under her makeup, she looked as queasy as Kloe felt. "Get your code and lets get back to the school."

Kloe shrugged and pulled out her flash drive. "So – William. Is he hot or is he hot?"

"Forget it. _He's _smitten with that Yumi girl too."

And the elevator swept upward, carrying William to the top of the Factory. In the instant as the doors closed, his expression shifted as quickly as a jump cut, leaving him glaring at the door as if it had offended him personally and clenching one hand into a fist. "Again!"

– Fin –


End file.
